Archbishop Jonathan Blake

The Most Reverend Jonathan Blake, Presiding Archbishop of the Open Episcopal Church B.A. (Hons), Dip. Pastoral Studies. Bishop's Haven, 105 Danson Crescent Welling DA16 2AS U.K. Mobile: 07767 687711 www.bishopjonathanblake.com bishopjonathanblake@ntlworld.com www.openepiscopalchurch.org www.twitter.com/bishopjonathan The Church is a member of The International Council of Community churches and the World Council of Churches. Married and a proud Dad.

DAWKINS MAKES US FACE UP TO DOWNS

Dawkins illustrates our hypocrisy. So many are happy to make such a decision in secret, but don't want to admit it or talk about it. The Times, instead of responding to the challenge that Dawkins raises, that bringing a Downs child into the world is 'immoral' when there is a choice otherwise, chooses to sensationalise and personalise the issue in tabloid style. Sentimentality and emotive arguments to his statement create a poor defence. Highlighting what we can learn both from a Downs child and in caring for them provides weak justification for entrapping a human being into a Downs condition. Dawkins makes us face up to the truths we find uncomfortable. One cherishes the life of a person that has been born and delights in all she/he has to give, Downs or otherwise. However, on a small overpopulated planet, where medical advances have enabled us to achieve, protect and enhance life, the best choice is to bring able children into the world.I suggest the able must want to make the best choices for their offspring. Putting it another way. If a parent had the choice before them to press a button by which an able child was born or a disabled child was born, it would be perverse for them to select deliberately a disabled child. What moral right would they have to destine a person to enter this world in a disabled condition?Life's evolution requires our intelligent choices to ensure the best for others as ourselves. We choose full health and functioning for ourselves as we must for others, particularly those we are privileged to help create.I agree wholeheartedly that great love and kindness is often displayed by Downs people in contrast to the able and recognise the challenge that poses. However I do not believe it provides a moral premise upon which we can choose Downs for a child nor a justification to be selective in our application of medical advances to ensure there are Downs births for our edification.I don't think there are the statistics to demonstrate that Downs are inclined always to display greater loving virtue than others, only anecdotal individual cases. The suggestion that the world would be better populated by a Downs version of the human race is down more to sentiment I suggest than hard analysis.The difficulty lies in what may be deemed a patronising approach towards those who are Downs. For instance, if someone could press a button to make you a Downs today would you accept this, in search of this Utopian world of compassion and embracing of Downs as an advantage. I suspect that few, if any able bodied people would opt to be Downs. If so, how dare we deliver that to the unborn.I do not see a Downs person as a blight, rather most often as an oasis of love and innocence, different as we all are, and of equal value to all others. However, this again does not justify deciding that the unborn should be Downs. We must choose, where we can, for all to be born with equal health. Together we have to face the challenges of life. I find no purchase in the argument that because we can learn much from a Downs person, we must destine them to be so, nor that because we can learn much from a paraplegic, we should enforce them into such a life.A person born with Downs is as equal to everyone else. I think that unequivocally. However at the unborn level, when choice is available, I do not believe a parent has the right to choose a disability for their child.http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4182334.ece

A BEHEADING IS INHUMAN - SO IS BOMBING A CHILD.

Do we really think that we can solve this militarily, that Cameron returning from holiday will turn the tide and that MI5, MI6 and the SAS will provide a solution. There is a surfeit of blood and might talk. A bomb for a bomb and a knife for a knife dooms us all. Beheading an innocent and defenceless man in cold blood is inhuman, however an allied bomb eviscerating a child is too. Politicians and religious leaders are operating reactively and superficially. Original thinking and long term strategic planning are needed. The world is in desperate need of a new approach to the equitable distribution of resources. We are paying a terrible price for our greed.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

A MAN FROM LONDON BEHEADS

A man from London beheads a man from the United States and we continue to identify the evil of violence as within Islam. The challenge for humanity is to cease such dissembling and join in common cause to understand our propensity for aggression. We need to stop the 'Christian' lie that we can bring salvation to the world, egged on by our super hero fantasies and act with humility to understand that the enemy to peace lies within us all. Only by learning the infinitely fragile approach of understanding others, walking in their shoes and aspiring to build an equitable world will we overcome the looming catastrophe.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

OUR HANDS ARE FAR FROM CLEAN AS JAMES FOLEY IS BEHEADED

The last State beheading in France was in 1977. The last inhuman execution in the U.S. was July 2014. The last hanging in the U.K. was in 1964. Saddam Hussein was jeered as he was hung. His half brother executed two weeks later, was decapitated during a botched hanging. Our hands are far from clean.It is damaging for us to continue to demonise the Islamic community with these grotesque images without realising our own culpability and similar practices. The demons are in all of us. We know that many innocents have been wrongly executed and considering beheading, the French Revolution is but one gross example.It is the similar bloodlust that has driven our atrocities over history from the crusades, to burning at the stake, to hanging drawing and quartering, to the French Revolution among others, to colonial excesses, to the two world wars, to capital punishment et al...Our neat and tidy systems get it wrong, so we execute innocents.....and our halls of fine thought are mistaken and we invade on poor intelligence and thousands of civilians are slaughtered.....and our precision bombing is not quite so perfect and children's bodies are eviscerated...http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/middleeast/article4181635.ece

REVIEW - THAT OLD DEVIL CALLED GOD AGAIN

Professor Neal Robinson has been the professor of Islamic Studies in Wales, Belgium, South Korea, Australia, Kazakhstan and Russia. He writes:

The crude self-hating proselytising faith that you so rightly reject is alive and well and I often hear it pedalled by street preachers in city centres.

Evolutionary biologists disagree as to why religion exists. However, I am convinced by the arguments (well put by Wilson in Darwin’s Cathedral) for thinking that it produces group cohesion and thereby increases a society’s chances of survival. The problem is that it does this by demonising outsiders.

This is something that we must now work to overcome. It will be very difficult.

All religious traditions revere a supernatural being or ancestor who ‘knows’ people’s thoughts. Statements such as ‘to whom all hearts are open, all desires known…’ merely reinforce the child’s sense of being watched.

Most young adults feel the unconscious need to identify with a heroic figure, in order to cope with their own sense of mortality.

I think the best we can do is to combat exclusivism.

Of course the Bible is toxic in the hands of fundamentalists.

I have no time for clerics who disguise their muddled thoughts by appealing to mystery.

KATE BUSH AND PRINCE - LIVE WITH iPHONES OR STAY AT HOME.

Hey come on Kate, Prince, Coldplay, etc - are people so gullible? You who wallow in wealth and use every piece of modern technology to further your bank accounts, don't feign a desire for intimacy to hide protectionism and a return to a screen less world of unique encounters when you court all the screens you can. You just can't stand the power being shared, your images and your 'lucky' break talent becoming common fare. Live with it or stay at home.http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/music/article4180879.ece

LEGAL AND BANKING ENDORSED THIEVERY

What law school no doubt tells them - how to fleece the public with exorbitant fees and unjustifiable costs that makes access to justice the privilege of the rich, denied to the rest. The legal profession, in the main, consists of endorsed thievery similar to the financial industry, that laugh at the rest of us, in our impotence, before their self interested monopolies.http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/life/article4178779.ece

FINALLY CENSORSHIP FOR MILEY CYRUS'S PORN

About time. 'Wrecking Ball' is so highly sexual and yet has been watched freely by children of all ages. With such videos and the regrettable and misplaced media and popular interest in the distortion of sexuality presented in the '50 Shades of Grey' filth, our society is becoming ever more sexualised in an unhealthy and relationship threatening manner.http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article4179809.ece

ASSANGE'S MOUSE HOLE

Assange has damaged his credibility by hiding in a mouse hole. Truth and legitimate protest dislike the shadows.He does the oppressed no service by hiding from the rage of the system and the wiles of the wicked. Better to face, expose and ultimately overcome.http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4179629.ece

5000 A WEEK NOW READING MY BLOG AND NUMBERS RISING

Challenging, different, lateral thinking to help change views, inspire creative thinking, spur visionary planning and all with the intention of urging everyone to play a part in building a better, more loving, inclusive and just social order for the world.

BARY'S BEHEADING AND STILL WE TOLERATE RELIGION

“It’s beautiful when you see Allah’s law’s implemented”.So says Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, having beheaded an opponent and holding the severed head up for a photo on Twitter.His family, having fled Egypt, were given asylum in a one million council house in Maida Vale. Bary now tells us that :“The lions are coming for you filthy kuffs [infidels] . . . beheadings in your own backyard soon.”

And still we tolerate religion in our land.

We have an established Church, we broadcast religious 'Thoughts for the Day' and Church services.

We even legislate for more faith schools.

We expose children to the corrupting influence of the Bible and the other faith's religious books.

We take them to church, send them to Sunday School and allow them to attend school assemblies.

We allow the building of new centres of worship for all the faiths.

And by so doing we threaten the destruction of all that we have so far achieved.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

14 YEAR OLD CHILD AFRAID IN BEXLEY CELL

Banged up. Four concrete walls pressing in. Artificial light. Steel door. Claustrophobic.
Frightened.
Disorientated.
Without a parent.
Without a responsible adult.
Alone.
Banged up.
Head in hands.
He'd been at school that morning.
Playground fight.
Punches had been thrown.
A parent complained. Police were called.
He was arrested.
Banged up.
In an adult cell.
In breach of the PACE regulations.
There were so many playground fights during my childhood.
No one was carted off to prison.
But this is Bexley.
Bexley Custody Suite abuses children.

THE CHRIST WHO SLAUGHTERS

Jesus may have persecuted no one. However the 'Christ' of the Christians has slaughtered many.The 'Christ' is the human invention of the power hungry wanting to claim preferential access to the Divine and justification for their blood letting.

Dad that could so easily have died of excited delirium or heart failure.

Just another day at the Bexley Custody suite....

Archbishop to police: 'But this man may be entirely innocent. He could have just been out with his wife and children at the local chip shop. You might have unnecessarily devastated the whole family. Why did you choose to use such violence? Did you try other ways to gain the cooperation of the man?

Saturday, August 09, 2014

ARCHBISHOP BLAKE ASKED TO QUELL FEARS OVER SUPER MOON ARMAGEDDON

Sunday, August 03, 2014

GAMMY AND PATTARAMON CHANBUA AND THE GREAT EVIL OF THEIR HONESTY

I detect a rich world hypocrisy raising its ugly head in much of the 'moral' commentary being heard on this issue. It seems so many have so much to say. Shock, disgust and censure are in plentiful supply. How could they abandon a Down's baby?

However, that is not the actual issue. Down's babies and many others are abandoned routinely within the rich world, terminated 'efficiently', discreetly and without even an eyebrow raised.

What the rich find so uncomfortable is having their tidy deceits exposed and paraded for all to see. How dare the 'disposal' of a Down's child be made so explicit?

The same dishonesty allows us to enjoy violent movies while ensuring we never permit anyone to actually see the carnage underway in Gaza or elsewhere.

Rich world culture is racing headlong towards greater pretence. I'm sure the law makers will legislate rapidly, not to protect the Down's child of course, or the children of Gaza, rather to ensure we don't ever have to catch a reflection of the truth in any mirror.

Friday, August 01, 2014

BLACK MAN IN CUSTODY IN BEXLEY

Black man: 'The police won't tell me where my children are. They took them away when I was arrested and they won't tell me what has happened to the, I have asked them repeatedly but they won't tell me.'

Archbishop to police: 'This man in custody says you will not tell him who is looking after his children.'

Custody Police Officer: (With a sarcastic grin on his face) 'Oh, hasn't he been told yet....'

WHISTLE BLOWERS NEED PROTECTION

After consistent breaches of the PACE regulations and numerous disturbing incidents, that I witnessed while carrying out my duties as an Independent Custody Visitor (ICV) for the Bexley ICV panel, I blew the whistle finally when I found an eleven year old locked up in an adult cell in Bexley Custody Suite. Imprisoning an eleven year old in such a manner is a breach, although the police and The Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) 'get round' the relevant regulation by citing shortage of appropriate facilities and staffing levels. MOPAC's response to my blowing the whistle, instead of acting to protect children in custody, was to axe me from the panel. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4163731.ece